Elliot wrote:Finally, there is something called HUB GEARS. In my father’s youth, he had a bicycle with two hub gears. Then for several decades the standard was three hub gears. Now there are rear wheel hubs with as many as 15 gears inside. From the outside, the bicycle looks like a single-speed. I like hub gears. They are reliable and easy to use. There is one shifter, and the chain never moves except round and round.

If I ever find myself with a bunch of cash to spend and no where to put it, I'll probably get one of my unicycle wheels relaced with a Schlumpf hub (A steal at a mere $1600 USD!). It's great having a gear on your wheel to go from 1:1 (1 pedal revolution, to 1 wheel revolution) to 1:1.5! Suddenly your 36" wheel is a functional 54" wheel and you're moving faster than you can run if you fall off the front!

Their price point is sure better than Schlumpf. The problem with it though, is I'm betting all of their rear hub gears are free-wheelers, which is rad for a bicycle but a unicycle has to be direct drive in both directions, with no coasting. The forward and backward pedaling is used to keep the unicycle under you. You're basically falling forward, but you never hit the ground. That's maintained by adding a little more or less umpf into your spinning.

(It's also why you fall off the front when you're going as fast as you can. You hit a rock, and your wheel loses speed, but you don't... so you need to pedal a little faster to keep the wheel under you. It kind of advances forwards from there by degrees, until you're trying to run as fast as you were going, or until you're trying to just lift your feet fast enough to stay upgright, or until you're rolling on the pavement leaving some skin behind.)

I just picked up my first 2 parts bikes. I'm gonna use the wheels off the little BMX bike for a trailer I'm going to make for my bike to haul around parts and beer. The rest will be parted out and I'll keep the little parts for the burn next year.

Tinkering with a couple of bicycles today, I was reminded of a common and serious problem. This applies to bicycles with coaster brake – where you pedal backward to stop. Here is the problem:

That lever is there for a reason, and it must be attached. It is the torque arm for the brake, and all the braking force goes thru it. If it is not fastened, there is only the friction of the axle nuts to resist the braking force, and the whole hub will soon rotate, causing all manner of mayhem. So please make sure it is fastened with a secure bolt-and-nut thru the arm and the little clamp, like this:

If the clamp is missing, you can use almost any scrap of metal to rig a new one; precision not required, only strength. On some bicycles there is a bracket welded onto the frame instead, eliminating the problem of misplacing the clamp.

While we are at it, here is yet another reason to put a luggage rack on the back of a bicycle:

Yes, it is far too easy to life a bicycle by the saddle, and it is common for me to have to replace broken saddles. The saddle “pan” is often made of cheap plastic and breaks easily. This happens soon enough from sitting on the saddle -- no sense speeding the arrival of that day by pulling upward also. This one is already completely broken on one side and half way there on the other. You don’t want to be riding it when the other side also separates. So install a luggage rack and grab it to lift the bicycle.

Finally, pedals.... The plastic ones made these days are truly crappy. So keep an eye out for old bicycles with steel pedals. These pedals have rubber to step on, but the frame of the pedal is steel. And they have proper ball bearings. I sometimes pick up a junk ten-speed just for the pedals. To replace pedals you need a 15 MM open-end wrench. The pedal on the left side of the bicycle has left-hand threads. There are two sizes of threads on pedals; one for one-piece cranks and an other for three-piece cranks. Not interchangeable, except that adapters do exist -- ... -- just get the correct kind.

Elliot wrote:Finally, pedals.... The plastic ones made these days are truly crappy. So keep an eye out for old bicycles with steel pedals. These pedals have rubber to step on, but the frame of the pedal is steel. And they have proper ball bearings. I sometimes pick up a junk ten-speed just for the pedals. To replace pedals you need a 15 MM open-end wrench. The pedal on the left side of the bicycle has left-hand threads. There are two sizes of threads on pedals; one for one-piece cranks and an other for three-piece cranks. Not interchangeable, except that adapters do exist -- ... -- just get the correct kind.

Hallelujah, about the pedals. One of the first things I recommend replacing on a bike that has plastic pedals because if they haven't already broken, they will shortly.

-- Inspire or empower your neighbor, the rest is a waste of precious time